It’s the lucky 13th anniversary for this ridiculous website of mine, where I’m still blogging about comics after all this time, long past the point of everyone running out of patience for people who blog about comics. But here I am anyway, still doing it and not planning to stop anytime soon, at least until the meteor finally strikes or the medication kicks in, whichever comes first.

Seriously, though, thanks to all of you out there who are still finding enough value on my site to come back day after day and see what I’ve managed to type up this time. I really do appreciate your readership. And thanks of course to the usual suspects, like my family who supported my comic book habit (and later my comic-selling career), my girlfriend Nora, pal Dorian, my fellow comics bloggers both still standing and emeritus, and as always, thanks to Comics Blogger Supreme Neilalien for leading the way. I also wanted to give special notice to a couple of swell cats: Tim O’Neil, who’s a good pal and has been undergoing some significant life changes this year; and Bully the Little Bull Stuffed with Wonderment and his pal John, both of whom we are very fortunate to have around.

This past year has been going along mostly smoothly, despite losing my grandmother in January, which was very sad, but she did have 96 full years of life and was active and out and about up until nearly the very end. As I mentioned in that linked post, she was thrilled to pieces that I finally had a store of my own and loved telling me how happy she was she got to visit it.

Speaking of the store, Sterling Silver Comics had its second anniversary last month, with hopefully many more anniversaries to come in the future. The business is doing well, I’m paying myself and my bills and building stock and clientele, so I seem to be doing okay. I do tend to complain about the vagaries of the comics industry both here and on the Twitterers, but that’s just venting…I’m happy to be where I’m at, and only wish I’d made the move sooner.

Another big change this year is that I set up a Patreon account for this site, so if any of you happen to have a spare dollar or two a month that you’d care to contribute in support of the work I do here, I’d be most appreciative and it would help out a lot.

I also had to get a new vehicle this year as the old truck finally gave up the ghost, so have I mentioned my Patreon account, ha ha, you know, just asking for no reason.

Speaking of Twitter, as I was just prior to the above begging, I’ve been active there as I have every year since first joining back in 2007. Free free to follow me there if you’d like, but here are a few highlights (or lowlights, depending on your particular opinion of my “humor”) from the past few months:

Usually I’ll post about the comics retail life, such as when this realization set in:

Or when a most fortuitous event occurs:

Once in a while I have to remind myself to have some perspective:

But sometimes it’s hard when faced with a public that can hate and fear the very idea of funnybook sellin’:

Sometimes my perspective veers off in the opposite direction:

But there are still plenty of moments at the store that make it all worth it:

Then I’m pulled back down again:

And it wasn’t all just retail talk on the Twitters…sometimes I gave insightful film commentary:

And then I made everyone sad with this observation (though the way things are going, maybe we’ll get this as a comic book):

Once in a while I’ll talk about actual comics:

…And the people who make them:

…And once in a while, I’ll ruminate upon the very idea of comics blogging:

As evidence for that last tweet, here are some of the notable posts (i.e. about 95% of them) on Ye Olde Progressive Ruine from the past twelve months:

And just because of the way things were timed this month, all I have to list here is the latest End of Civilization post, which is as good of a place as any to remind you that I’m back to doing monthly EoCs after an extended break somehow caused by opening my store. Plus, I did some comics reviews over the past year, and I also threw in a couple Sluggo Saturdays, too.

Again, thanks to all of you for sticking with me all this time, for reading my site and leaving comments and even occasionally stopping by my store to say “hello” in person — that all means so very much to me, and I can’t tell you enough how greatly it’s appreciated.

For reading all that, here’s a picture of 13-year-old me with my grandparents’ tortoise while it’s eating a bunch of flowers: